We are a group of seniors from the AQDR-Granby (Quebec Association for the Defense of the Rights of Retirees and Seniors) who reflect on the issues and challenges of aging in our society. During our discussions, a subject quickly emerged: the perverse, dehumanizing and invasive effects of digital technological advances.
A few examples will be enough to set the table. Pauline, 84, spent more than three days trying, by all sorts of means, to replace her lost credit card. Ève, 14 years old, victim of sexual assault, finally decides to dial 1-833-DÉNONCE to confide her distress to an automated system. Antoine, 19, a civil engineering student at university, presents an end-of-term project on the construction of bridges, created from scratch by ChatGPT. What is this, ChatGPT? It is a conversational robot, or text generator, running on artificial intelligence algorithms. Eh ? Too bad if you don’t understand, it’s a vocabulary reserved for the initiated.
SOS! Where did the human being go? This question sparks lively debates and raises strong emotions in a group of elders, experienced people, who note the crumbling of fundamental human values: availability to oneself and to others, desire to take time, pleasure in encounter, authenticity. So-called “advanced” technologies take us back to the Middle Ages, if not to prehistory: they plunge us into a decline of humanity.
Attention ! We do not refuse technology, if it is at the service of humans and life, not the opposite, that is to say humans enslaved to technology.
We share the fruit of our reflections through short articles, imbued with humor and lucidity, clearly illustrating the atmosphere that reigns within our small group, hence our name… The Sharpened Pencils Brigade.